Naresh Bahadur Shasi, a clothing store owner, tries to make a deal with the parents of Kausi Chaudhary, 10, seated center, to renew his contract to keep her as a kamlari, or domestic slave for another year.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Naresh Bahadur Shasi, a clothing store owner, tries to make a deal...

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Every January, 83-year-old Olga Murray of Sausalito, Calif. goes to southwestern Nepal and finds impoverished Tharu farmers selling their daughters to higher caste families to be domestic slaves. In the illegal trade, families get about $75, but Olga often stops the sale by offering the families a piglet or goat if they keep their daughters home.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Every January, 83-year-old Olga Murray of Sausalito, Calif. goes...

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Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation volunteers confront a woman, center, who had taken Gita Chaudhary, bottom right, in Kohalpur, Nepal. NYOF volunteers believed the woman had purchased Gita from her Tharu parents to be a kamlari, or domestic slave.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation volunteers confront a woman,...

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Jamuna Chaudhary, 18, washes clothes in the home of her employer in Kohalpur, Nepal. Jamuna was sold into slavery when she was 8, and has been working as a kamlari - domestic slave - since then.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Jamuna Chaudhary, 18, washes clothes in the home of her employer in...

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Gita Chaudhary in Kohalpur, Nepal. Gita was taken by a woman who Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation volunteers believed had purchased her from her Tharu parents to be a kamlari, or domestic slave.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Gita Chaudhary in Kohalpur, Nepal. Gita was taken by a woman who...

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Anita Chaudhary, 18, holds her two-year-old son in her village in the Dang district of Nepal. The former girl domestic slave, or Kamlari, was raped by her employer and forced to have two abortions. She left when she became pregnant for a third time. She is now suing the employer for property rights with the help of the Nepalese Youth Opportunities Foundation.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Anita Chaudhary, 18, holds her two-year-old son in her village in...

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Olga Murray, marches with hundreds of freed domestic slaves, or kamlaris, during the Maghe Sankranti festival in Ghorahi, Nepal. Every January, 83-year-old Olga Murray of Sausalito, Calif., center, goes to southwestern Nepal and finds impoverished Tharu farmers selling their daughters to higher caste families to be domestic slaves. In the illegal trade, families get about $75, but Olga often stops the sale by offering the families a piglet or goat if they keep their daughters home.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Olga Murray, marches with hundreds of freed domestic slaves, or...

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Olga Murray, right, speaks with several of the students at J and K House, the boys and girls schools she started for needy children in Kathmandu, Nepal. Her philanthropic endeavors have spanned over two decades for the poor and infirm, and for the past 10 years, her Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation has rescued over 4300 girls from domestic slavery.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Olga Murray, right, speaks with several of the students at J and K...

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Olga Murray watches a confrontation between Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation volunteers and a woman. Volunteers believed the woman had purchased her from her Tharu parents to be a kamlari, or domestic slave.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Olga Murray watches a confrontation between Nepalese Youth...

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Gita Chaudhary looks out a bus window in Kohalpur, Nepal, Gita was taken by a woman, left, who Nepalese Youth Oportunity Foundation volunteers believed had purchased her from her Tharu parents to be a kamlari, or domestic slave.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Gita Chaudhary looks out a bus window in Kohalpur, Nepal, Gita was...

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Young people in the Bardiya District of Nepal dance and enjoy the Maghe Sankranti festival which celebrates the new year. The festival also is infamous as it is also a time when Tharu parents sell their daughters as domestic slaves.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Young people in the Bardiya District of Nepal dance and enjoy the...

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Tharu villagers in the Bardiya provice of Nepal celebrate the Maghe Sankranti Festival on Friday, January 16, 2009. The festival which celebrates the end of the fiscal year in this agrarian community has become the time when the Tharu make deals to sell their daughters as domestic servants.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Tharu villagers in the Bardiya provice of Nepal celebrate the Maghe...

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Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation volunteers perform street dramas to educate local villagers as to the dangers of selling their daughters to domestic slavery to make ends meet. Every January, 83-year-old Olga Murray of Sausalito, Calif. goes to southwestern Nepal and finds impoverished Tharu farmers selling their daughters to higher caste families to be domestic slaves. In the illegal trade, families get about $75, but Olga often stops the sale by offering the families a piglet or goat if they keep their daughters home.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation volunteers perform street...

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Performers do traditional dances as villagers watch a street drama put on by the Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation in Ghorahi, Nepal. The NYOF uses the street dramas to bring attention to the pain caused by parents selling their daughters to be domestic slaves.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Performers do traditional dances as villagers watch a street drama...

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Villagers watch a street drama put on by the Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation in Ghorahi, Nepal. The NYOF uses the street dramas to bring attention to the pain caused by parents selling their daughters to be domestic slaves.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Villagers watch a street drama put on by the Nepalese Youth...

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During the mid-January Maghe Sankranti festival in Nepal, Kamlari brokers arrive in small Tharu villages hoping to make a deal with families to sell their daughters so they can make some money in the extremely poor region. The men, dressed in their expensive clothes and riding motorcycles, strike deals to take a girl, sometimes as young as 7 years old, away from her family for a year to be a domestic slave.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

During the mid-January Maghe Sankranti festival in Nepal, Kamlari...

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Kausi Chaudhary, is hugged by her sister, Sibitri, as her parents negotiate selling her to a family as a Kamlari.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Kausi Chaudhary, is hugged by her sister, Sibitri, as her parents...

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Som Paneru, standing, of Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation, questions a young couple about a young woman traveling with them that he suspects was purchased as a Kamlari, or domestic slave, in Kohalpur, Nepal.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Som Paneru, standing, of Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation,...

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A Tharu sharecropper speaks with Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation volunteers about giving his daughters to the landowner of his farm at Kohalpur, Nepal.The man felt he had no alternative but to give his daughter to the man as domestic servants or lose his farm.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

A Tharu sharecropper speaks with Nepalese Youth Opportunity...

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Som Paneru, rear center, speaks with a family that he noticed had two domestic servants, or Kalmlaris on a bridge outside of Kohalpur, Nepal. Paneru, is the executive director of the Nepalese Youth Opportunities Foundation.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Som Paneru, rear center, speaks with a family that he noticed had...

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Anita Chaudhary, 17, looks out from her store in the Dang District of Nepal. Chaudhary was a Kamlari for years, and claims that the man who employeed her raped her and forced her to have two abortions.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Anita Chaudhary, 17, looks out from her store in the Dang District...

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Anita Chaudhary, 18, holds her two-year-old son in her village in the Dang district of Nepal.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Anita Chaudhary, 18, holds her two-year-old son in her village in...

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Hundreds of former kamlaris, or domestic slaves, gather in Ghorahi, Nepal on Wednesday, January 14, 2009 during the Maghe Sankranti festival to protest against the kamlari practice.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Hundreds of former kamlaris, or domestic slaves, gather in Ghorahi,...

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Olga Murray, founder of Nepalese Youth Opportunities Foundation, shares some time with Urmila Chaudhary in Ghorahi, Nepal. Chaudhary, a Kamlari for 12 years, became the District Chairperson of the Common Forum for Kamlari Freedom after being rescued by her brother. The group is dedicated to stopping the sale of young girls in the impoverished Tharu region of Nepal.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Olga Murray, founder of Nepalese Youth Opportunities Foundation,...

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Urmila Chaudhary in Ghorahi, Nepal before a march and rally against the Kamlari system of slavery that plagues western Nepal.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Urmila Chaudhary in Ghorahi, Nepal before a march and rally against...

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Former kamlaris, or girl slaves, recieve their new goats from Olga Murray as incentive for their parents to keep the girls out of slavery in Ghorahi, Nepal.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Former kamlaris, or girl slaves, recieve their new goats from Olga...

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Former kamlaris, or girl slaves, look over their new goats, after recieving them from Olga Murray as incentive for their parents to keep the girls out of slavery.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Former kamlaris, or girl slaves, look over their new goats, after...

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Former kamlaris, walk off with their new goats, after receiving them from Olga Murray as incentive for their parents to keep the girls out of slavery in Ghorahi, Nepal.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Former kamlaris, walk off with their new goats, after receiving...

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Former kamlari receives her new goat from Olga Murray as incentive for their parents to keep the girls out of slavery in Ghorahi, Nepal.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Former kamlari receives her new goat from Olga Murray as incentive...

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Former kamlaris, or domestic slaves, tend to their henna crop at their farming cooperative near Ghorahi, Nepal. The former girl slaves were trained by a program funded by the Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Former kamlaris, or domestic slaves, tend to their henna crop at...

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Former kamlaris, or domestic slaves, in their sewing cooperative after being trained by a program funded by the Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Former kamlaris, or domestic slaves, in their sewing cooperative...

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A former kamlari, or domestic slave, sews a school uniform in a sewing cooperative after being trained by a program funded by the Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation. NYOF buys girls out of slavery and sends them to school or vocational training and teaches them to become independent business owners.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

A former kamlari, or domestic slave, sews a school uniform in a...

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Former kamlaris, or domestic slaves, sew school uniforms in a sewing cooperative after being trained by a program funded by the Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Former kamlaris, or domestic slaves, sew school uniforms in a...

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Former kamlaris, or domestic slaves, sew school uniforms in a sewing cooperative after being trained by a program funded by the Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation.

Surrounded by more than 1,000 girls she freed from domestic slavery, 83-year-old Olga Murray of Sausalito marched through this rural town, chanting in Nepali for an end to bonded servitude.

"End the kamlari system!" she shouted, raising her fist in the air.

In a form of trafficking concentrated among ethnic Tharu farmers, destitute families sell their daughters for $75, the equivalent of a third of their annual income, to work as live-in "kamlari" servants in the homes of higher-caste families.

Girls as young as 6 are forced into years of menial labor, cooking, cleaning and babysitting in the homes of strangers. Kamlaris typically work from sunup to sundown, eat leftovers and sleep on the floor and, in the worst cases, are beaten and raped.

For the past 20 years, Olga Murray of Sausalito has dedicated her life to helping to educate, house and clothe Nepal's neediest children. The 83-year-old widow's efforts include fighting the practice of selling young girls to be domestic slaves, or kamlar

Media: San Francisco Chronicle

Founder of the Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation, Murray's passion for the last two decades has been to educate, house and clothe Nepal's neediest children. That includes the kamlaris she finds every January during the Maghe Sankranti winter festival, a major Hindu holiday.

During the weeklong revelry of Maghe Sankranti, kamlari selling hits a fever pitch. The holiday also marks the end of the Nepalese fiscal year and is the one time masters traditionally let their kamlaris return home for a few days.

It's a busy time, when many people are traveling. Brokers from cities throughout Nepal come to the Tharu villages to negotiate or renew one-year kamlari contracts, fathers are making deals and advocates like Murray are trying to stop them.

Murray has a unique way of doing it. She offers a pig or goat to parents who promise not to sell their daughters. Families can make more than they get for their daughter by breeding or butchering the animal. If they accept, Murray will also pay the girls' $100 annual school expenses.

In the last eight years, 3,300 families have taken the deal. Nepalese charities replicating Murray's model have bartered another 1,700 girls out of slavery.

Although lawyers working for Murray's nonprofit convinced the Nepalese Supreme Court to outlaw the kamlari practice in 2006, cultural resistance has been strong and the government has yet to prosecute anyone for keeping a kamlari.

An estimated 5,900 daughters are sold into debt bondage each year in Nepal, according to aid organizations that have conducted door-to-door surveys.

Murray knows of 40 kamlaris who simply disappeared.

Generations of debt

The Tharu are sharecroppers who live in mud huts without electricity or running water in five of Nepal's 75 districts. The Dang, Banke, Bardiya, Kailali and Kanchanpur districts are agricultural lowlands of the Himalaya, on Nepal's southwestern border.

Sixty years ago, the Tharu owned their farms and lived in relative isolation, immune to malaria common to the Terai plains. But with the advent of anti-malarial drugs, new settlers moved in. The illiterate Tharu lost much of their land, swindled by fake loan documents, or enticed by bottles of alcohol. They became "kamaiya," or tenant farmers, passing increasing debt from generation to generation.

Some landless Tharu offer their daughters to farm landlords to keep from losing their plots, said Som Paneru, executive director of Murray's charity. When daughters of the new landlords got married, they took the kamlaris as dowry when they moved in with their husbands, and the kamlari custom spread to the rest of the country.

Now, people from throughout Nepal come to the rural districts to buy girl servants.

Families often think their daughters will be better off - many employers promise to send kamlaris to school, but that rarely happens, Murray said.

"These families love their daughters, but they figure it's better to send her away than let her starve," Murray said. "But these girls are so easily abused."

Motorcycle men

In the waning days of Maghe Sankranti, several men on motorcycles, conspicuous with their leather jackets, sunglasses and cell phones, cruised the mud huts of a Tharu village in the Kailali district.

They are labor contractors looking to buy kamlaris.

One motorcyclist, Karna Kunwar, a journalist from the nearby town of Tikapur, said he was in the village to renew his 16-year-old kamlari's contract. He noted that kamlaris are becoming controversial, but explained that the rural girls get a chance at a better life.

"Girls from here, when they go to the city, they get luxuries like TV and better dresses and good food," he said. "When they come home for Maghe, they say they like their freedom, but after 10 days or so, they start missing that city life."

Naresh Bahadur Shasi, a clothing store owner, walked through the village talking into a cell phone as he searched for his 10-year-old kamlari's home. He planned to buy her for a second year for $80, and find another servant for his second home.

"Some organizations are saying no to the kamlari system, but clearly this is a private business," Shasi said.

Shasi found the hut, but the deal did not go as planned. The father, complaining he never could reach his daughter when he called Shasi's house over the past year, refused.

His wife was furious he wouldn't sell.

"Maybe our daughter will see how poor we are and want to earn some rupees for us," she said, looking down at Kausi Chaudhary, (all Tharu share the same last name), who sat silently between the adults on a handmade leather-strap bench, listening to her fate.

After Shasi left to look elsewhere, Kausi's father gave the real reason he wouldn't sell.

Earlier that morning, he said, another man came by with a better deal - $95 with half the money up front.

Finding her voice

Urmila Chaudhary, 19, is the new face of the kamlari.

Less than two years out of debt bondage, she has become the leader of the largest kamlari resistance movement, the Common Forum for Kamlari Freedom, representing 1,600 former girl slaves.

She unveils the horrors of her captivity on weekly radio programs, in street plays and marches. She knocks on doors in Tharu villages to dissuade parents from selling their daughters.

Sold by her father when she was 6, she wound up serving a Kathmandu family of 15.

"I'd clean one dish and another would appear - it was never ending," said Urmila.

They often beat her for what they said was shoddy housework, and once threw boiling water on her as punishment, she said.

A year ago, her brother helped her escape. With Murray's help, Urmila and hundreds like her have returned to school in Dang. Urmila is in the fifth grade and hopes to become a journalist.

"Olga is like our mother - bigger than mother," said Urmila.

So many former kamlaris have come home that Murray funded the construction of 36 classrooms to accommodate them. Collaborating with her Nepal-based sister charity, Friends of Needy Children, Murray has started a henna co-op farm, sewing programs and a driving school to teach girls how to operate electric three-wheel "tempo" taxis.

A childhood lost

In Kohalpur, the largest town in the Banke district, Murray paid a visit to kamlari Jamuna Chaudhary, 18, while her owners were out. For the last decade, she has cooked, swept, and washed clothes at an outdoor water pump for the family of four she serves.

"They tricked me; my employer said he'd send me to school, but he never did," she said, in tears.

She wakes at 5 a.m. to begin her chores. By 10 p.m., she curls up to sleep on a dirty mattress under the staircase. She never leaves the propery.

She ended her story when a relative of her master returned.

"She's too old to go to school, but she expressed interest when we told her we could get her into one of our literacy classes and then a vocational program," Murray said later.

Murray and Paneru make a plan to come back. First they will try to convince her employers to release her. If that doesn't work, they'll send a cease letter citing the Supreme Court ruling.

Ultimately, Murray, who worked for 37 years as a research attorney for the California Supreme Court in San Francisco, will file a lawsuit. Of the 70 cases Murray and her collaborators have filed, half were quickly settled because owners released their kamlaris.

Kamlari-free zone

Following the protest march in Ghorahi, the town center of the Dang district, Murray joined the thousands of former kamlaris in a field, surrounded by trees covered with fruit bats. From a brick gazebo, the local district leader declared Dang a "kamlari-free zone."

Murray clapped from the stage, but later said she worried the declaration would be largely symbolic, like the 2006 Supreme Court ruling.

"The nature of our government has always been to make promises to the community and never follow up," said Parliament member Shanta Chaudhary, 28, who spent 18 years as a kamlari.

When she was elected three years ago and began speaking in government meetings about the kamlari system, few of her 600 colleagues knew what she was talking about.

"The kamlari practice might not go away soon, but it will go away. It will," she said.

During this year's Maghe Sankranti festival, she and Paneru discovered kamlaris working for high-ranking Communist Party leaders, lawyers, journalists and police - and even for a woman who raises funds for children's rights in the Kathmandu office of the United Nations Children's Fund.

"You can see why it's so hard to work on this issue," said Paneru. "They all have kamlaris, and nobody wants to talk about it."

However, Dang's kamlari-free designation is a first for Nepal, and is a sign of hope, Murray told the former kamlaris from the rally stage.

"Now begins a new day for the daughters of Dang," Murray said over the rally microphone, sporting a fuchsia tikka mark on her forehead, a common Hindu blessing. "No longer will your little sisters have to go work in the homes of strangers. You can be anything you want now because education makes everything possible."

Days later, more than two dozen kamlari traffickers were arrested in Dang, according to a report in the Kathmandu Post. It's the first time the police have arrested a kamlari trafficker, Paneru said.

Searching for Gita

Murray scanned a chaotic roundabout in Kohalpur in the Banke district, undaunted by the diesel-chugging microbuses, ox carts and orphans begging for food.

Her team of Nepalese-speaking volunteers were boarding buses, looking for kamlaris traveling for the Maghe Sankranti festival. By asking a few questions, they try to find out where the girls live so Murray can offer their parents an animal in exchange for a promise not to sell them.

There's a commotion near one of the packed microbuses. A Tharu girl, no older than 10, is clinging to the arm of a well-dressed woman with painted nails and jewelry.

A crowd forms and there's a lot of shouting as the woman tells the little girl how to answer Paneru's questions.

The girl is a kamlari, her name is Gita Chaudhary and the woman is her employer. The woman says she is returning the girl to her village in the Dang district for a few days to celebrate Maghe Sankranti with her family.

Murray and Paneru do their best to persuade her to give up her kamlari, but fail. The woman boards the bus, pulling Gita behind her.

The next morning, Murray and Paneru navigate through the fog in a four-wheel drive Jeep to Gita's village.

But the residents didn't know Gita.

The information Paneru had written down after questioning the woman at the Kohalpur bus stop was bogus. The woman had lied.

"Gita Chaudhary is a name like Jane Smith," Murray said. "She probably lied about that, too."

Goats for girls

Early one morning, not far from where Murray marched with the kamlari protesters, five kamlaris gathered in a dirt yard off a steep alley of tenement homes.

They were smiling. Maghe Sankranti was over, but this time they would not be returning to someone else's house to cook and clean. After several months of negotiations, their parents had agreed to let Murray educate their daughters in exchange for a baby goat.

The girls looked over the animals trying to decide which one to bring back to their families.

As Murray and a social worker from Friends of Needy Children put ropes around the wriggling animals, Yamkumari Chaudhary was elected to make the first pick because she had been a kamlari the longest - five of her 17 years.

She cooked, did the laundry, washed dishes and collected animal dung for fertilizer as a servant in Kathmandu and Nepalgunj.

She pointed at the white one.

Murray handed the goat's rope to Yamkumari. She brought her hands together in prayer, touched her fingertips to her forehead and bent forward.

"Namaste," Murray said, using the Nepalese greeting of goodwill.

Yamkumari did the same.

"This goat is my freedom," she said. "When I was a kamlari, I wanted to escape but I didn't have any money. I'm going to take good care of this goat so it has many babies."

For a video of Olga Murray's work in the rural villages of Nepal, go to: sfgate.com